Wow! Could it be? We’ll have to wait and see in the real U.S. News law school rankings.
The post Historic U.S. News Law School Rankings Shakeup: Is Yale Law Out Of The Top Spot? appeared first on Above the Law.
We’re just a few months out from the release of the latest iteration of the U.S. News law school rankings, but we know that many are incredibly eager to see what the future may hold. For those of you who are growing too restless to wait any longer, we’ve got a surprise for you.
Today, we unveil a new rankings prediction, courtesy of noted law school consultant Mike Spivey of the Spivey Consulting Group. With the recent release of the 2024 ABA-required 509 disclosures, Spivey was able to calculate the upcoming U.S. News law school rankings using the magazine’s current methodology. Here are some additional details on how that task was performed:
The ABA has published the 2024 Standard 509 disclosures for all law schools, including the final official LSAT/GPA data from the 2023-2024 admissions cycle (compiled with +/- from the prior cycle here). This means that we can now predict the upcoming 2025-2026 U.S. News law school rankings with a high degree of accuracy using their current methodology, which primarily relies on publicly available data.
Spivey cautions, however, that his predictions may not be completely accurate because this year’s results are “so tightly clustered that even extremely minor, unpublished calculation changes (e.g., changing how certain numbers are rounded) could result in a very different set of rankings.” That being the case, he’s published the predicted rankings in groups, rather than assigning a specific rank to a specific school.
That being said, what could the new edition of U.S. News law school rankings look like? You can check out Spivey’s prediction for the full complement of 196 law schools, but here are the schools that may comprise the T14 based the calculations he’s run:
| Current 2024 Ranking | Predicted 2025 Ranking Group | Predicted 2025 Raw Score | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group 1 | |||
| Stanford University | 1 | Group 1 | 100 |
| Yale University | 1 | Group 1 | 99.55503189 |
| University of Chicago | 3 | Group 1 | 99.08244746 |
| Group 2 | |||
| University of Virginia | 4 | Group 2 | 97.7375265 |
| University of Pennsylvania | 4 | Group 2 | 97.4961672 |
| Harvard University | 4 | Group 2 | 97.16804728 |
| Group 3 | |||
| Duke University | 4 | Group 3 | 96.07104827 |
| University of Michigan | 9 | Group 3 | 95.7808896 |
| Northwestern University | 9 | Group 3 | 95.72502558 |
| New York University | 9 | Group 3 | 95.59032168 |
| Columbia University | 8 | Group 3 | 95.49293619 |
| Group 4 | |||
| University of California, Los Angeles | 13 | Group 4 | 93.15227925 |
| University of California, Berkeley | 12 | Group 4 | 92.70541776 |
| Washington University in St. Louis | 16 | Group 4 | 92.23597085 |
| Vanderbilt University | 19 | Group 4 | 91.98658968 |
| Georgetown University | 14 | Group 4 | 91.6471114 |
What’s this? Has Yale lost its edge? On top of that, it looks like one school may have been kicked out of the T14 entirely, and another is on the verge of being elbowed out as well! Will new schools actually enter the hallowed ground that is the T14!?! What’s going on here?
We know you want to see these schools with actual rankings assigned to them, and for that, we turn to Professor Derek Muller of Notre Dame Law at Excess of Democracy. He’s run similar calculations and offers a similar warning that we “proceed with caution” while viewing his rankings prediction. Buckle up, because this is going to be a wild ride.
| School | Projected Rank | This Year’s Rank |
| Stanford | 1 | 1 |
| Chicago | 2 | 3 |
| Yale | 3 | 1 |
| Virginia | 4 | 4 |
| Penn | 4 | 4 |
| Harvard | 4 | 4 |
| Duke | 7 | 4 |
| Michigan | 7 | 9 |
| Northwestern | 7 | 9 |
| NYU | 10 | 9 |
| Columbia | 10 | 8 |
| UCLA | 12 | 13 |
| Berkeley | 13 | 12 |
| Washington Univ. | 14 | 16 |
| Vanderbilt | 14 | 19 |
Stanford overtakes Yale to become the best law school in the nation, with Yale falling to No. 3! Yale has resided in the No. 1 spot since the inception of the U.S. News law school rankings, so this change would be historic. NYU and Columbia both drop for a tie at #10. Last, but certainly not least, Cornell and Georgetown are both out of the T14 entirely — and Washington University and Vanderbilt, two schools that have never been in the T14 before, have replaced them!
Will any or all of these things actually happen? That’s unclear for the moment, but given our experience with the rankings, these could all be very serious possibilities. Stay tuned for the release of the U.S. News law school rankings, which will likely be published sometime in this spring.
Predicted 2025-2026 U.S. News Law School Rankings [Spivey Consulting]
Updated projected 2025-2026 USNWR law school rankings (to be released March 2025 or so) [Excess of Democracy]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
